In 1911, he is listed as a member of The National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, as follows: "STANWOOD COBB, Newton Upper Falls, Mass. (23842). Great-grandson of Ebenezer Cobb, Jr., private, Col. Ebenezer Sprout's Mass. Regt.; great-grandson of Ebenezer Cobb, Sergeant First Middleboro Company of Minute Men."

He was an American educator, author and prominent Bahá'í of the 20th century.

He was born in Newton, Massachusetts to Darius Cobb — a Civil War soldier, artist and descendent of Elder Cobb of the second voyage of the Mayflower — and Eunice Hale (née Waite) — founding president of the Ladies Physiological Institute of Boston and mother of Cobb's four sisters and two other brothers. He studied first at Dartmouth College, where he was valedictorian of his 1905 graduating class, and then at Harvard Divinity School, earning a A.M. in philosophy and comparative religion 1910. In 1919 he married Ida Nayan Whitlam. Cobb was a member of several literary associations and of the Cosmos Club of Washington, D.C.

Cobb lived internationally for some years before settling at 19 Grafton St. in Chevy Chase, Maryland, where he died.

In 1907–1910, Cobb taught history and Latin at Robert College in Constantinople (now Istanbul), followed by several years teaching in the US and Europe. He later headed the English department at St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland (1914-15), taught at Asheville School in Asheville, North Carolina (1915-16), and was instructor of history and English at the United States Naval Academy (1916-19). Frustrated by the teaching experience at the Academy, Cobb heard a lecture by Marietta Johnson who helped marshal and crystalize his thoughts on education practice and curriculum theory. As a result, in 1919, Cobb founded the Chevy Chase Country Day School, of which he was the principal until his retirement, and, active in the progressive education movement in the United States, became a founder and motivating force, first secretary, and eventually president (1927-1930) of The Association for the Advancement of Progressive Education, later renamed in 1931 as Progressive Education Association, and then American Education Fellowship.

She was always known as "Nayan". Her husband Stanwood wrote: "Her very name indicated success, so she was told by the New York numerologist who had devised it for her a year before we met, to replace her given name "Ida" which I never did like. Every acquaintance has adored, as I always have, this unique exotic name so full of promise — the creation of New York's leading numerologist."

One of her distant cousins (Valarie (Drummond) Kalynchuk) wrote: "I found her "Officers' Declaration Paper — Canadian Over-Seas Expeditionary Force" dated April 29, 1916. She was living in Estevan, Saskatchewan at the time."

She and Stanwood Cobb were married on Sept. 19, 1919 in Manhattan, New York City.

Nayan and Stanwood Cobb had no children.

Much about Nayan and her life are described in a book "Life With Nayan", written after her death by her husband, Stanwood Cobb, and published in 1969.